"Look and see, for everyone is coming home!" Isaiah 60:4

Thursday, July 28, 2011

We've Arrived! Pt.1

We left the house yesterday for our 10 12 hour journey around 7:30 am. We had originally planned on leaving around 6 am so we could stop in Manhattan, KS around 8:00 am and get some breakfast. There is a little diner in town there that is special to Dylan and I so we try to go there whenever we can. Little did we know just how much God was protecting us by preventing us from leaving that early.

Though I pack as much as possible the night before, for some reason I kept thinking of things that we HAD to take with us, which was why we got gone so late. And once we're out on the road, we naturally take the most direct path there, which is to take I-70 west and don't stop till you reach mile 1. So we got gone around 7:30 which threw our breakfast plans off, and Dylan and I decided to eat breakfast in Topeka. There's another little diner there that is also special to me, because we used to go there when my Dad was still here.

Hanover Pancake House always has the best breakfasts, and we were pretty hungry already. I didn't want the kids to wait any longer to eat breakfast, so we stopped and had a feast of biscuits and gravy, french toast, hashbrowns and of course, pancakes! It was so yummy! I love taking the kids to places that I went when I was little!

So after breakfast we got back on the road again. We didn't get far before we saw there was a random DETOUR sign off to the right directing us on to I-470. Thinking nothing of it, we kept on I-70 out toward Auburn, which is right outside of Topeka on the west side. Before we got to the next exit, we saw another sign that said "INCIDENT AHEAD, I-70 CLOSED"
Closed??
Closed?? The whole highway is CLOSED??

And then the next sign we saw "Exit ahead closed" Le Sigh... Were they just going to make us sit on the highway until the "incident" was dealt with?? And if the whole highway was closed, why didn't they force us to take the DETOUR when we could instead of waiting til we got down the road a bit and THEN we realize that DETOUR was ment for us?

Thankfully, the exit was NOT closed, but everyone was using it to turn around and get back on the highway headed back east. Not the way we wanted to go, but better than standing still for who knows how long. So we took the detour, but then realized there were 2 detours. And of course, the one we took, was NOT meant for us.

So another half hour driving in circles almost to figure out what we needed to do to get back on the right track and we ended up taking Highway 24, which is north of Topeka, but would take us all the way to Manhattan, where we could join up with I-70 again.

And so we took Highway 24 as our detour, which ended up being really fun, if not a little slower than what we're used to. BUT, we got to drive through little towns we hadn't seen in a while. Dylan and I like to drive though small towns. We always talk about how much we would love to live in a small town some day. So I made the best out of the extra time we had and took pictures of the places we'd driven through.

Silver Lake, KS

Rossville, KS

St. Mary's , KS

Belvue, KS

Wamego, KS

And finally, the place that will ALWAYS be home for me,

Manhattan, KS

We intended to stop here from the beginning to pick up lunch items before we made our way west, so we went ahead and picked up supplies for lunch. And then we realized it WAS lunchtime.

Already.

And the kids were hungry.

But the kicker was that it had taken us 4 hours to make a typically 2 hour trip.

And we wern't anywhere close to being halfway yet....

P.S. THIS is why the highway had been shut down and rerouted. And I thank the authorities that took the precaution to protect themselves and the public.